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aised a hand to his head. "Strange creatures of this New World with hard skin, wings and many arms. I was knocked unconscious, and the animals left me for dead. When I awoke the next day, the bodies had gone: eaten, I presumed, or taken for strange, unnatural rites. The colony was deserted. I returned to England on the next supply ship, having survived until then on the dead colonists' supplies and local food, and I reported the matter directly back to the Queen, and to John Dee."
"Who's Dee?" Steven Taylor asked.
"Doctor John Dee," Marlowe replied, "the Queen's personal astrologer. Some of us believed that he had more influence upon her than was entirely healthy. Shortly after that, while wandering around London, Isaw one of the colonists from Roanoake! I recognized her, as clear as day, but when I approached her she ran! I swear she fell beneath a brewer's dray and was greviously injured, and yet she climbed to her feet and ran off as if her leg were not bent almost in half."
"Are you -?" Shakespeare began.
"Sure?" Marlowe nodded. "As sure as I am that you are sitting here before me. I told Walsingham the news, and he suggested that I should investigate what had happened to the colony. Shortly after that, I "died"." He laughed. "But I hear you took on my mantle, Will, and discovered Ralegh to be a traitor."
Shakespeare nodded weakly. "Walsingham put me to spy on him. As William Hall I infiltrated his circles and passed reports back. When Elizabeth died and James was made King, ten years after you... after you vanished... Ralegh plotted with various Catholics to kill the King and enthrone his daughter. His plot was discovered, and-"
"Discovered?" Marlowe clapped Shakespeare on the shoulder. "You do yourself a disservice, Will."
Shakespeare shrugged. "No matter. Ralegh was imprisoned in the Tower, and rots there still. But you - where did you go when I thoughtyour bones were rotting in Deptford, done to death by slanderous tongues?"
"In my strange afterlife,
